


we were born sick

by metalmeisje



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: F/M, Guns, Kidnapping, Mobscast, Mobscast AU, References to Dubcon, Violence, death mention, murder mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 11:44:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4390583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metalmeisje/pseuds/metalmeisje
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He met her at a party, as these things go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we were born sick

**Author's Note:**

> Some background for my Mobscast!Xephos. How he knew Lomadia, and then didn't. I am eternally in love with the Mobscast AU and in celebration of being able to do with it more from now on, I figured I might as well share this background... thing I wrote a while back.

She was always hot to the touch. From the very first moment he took her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles so light it was barely there, prompting an amused quirk of her lips that made him almost regret the old-fashioned greeting, the warmth of her fingers against his lingered there for hours. Or so he liked to imagine, anyway. And much later, when they were huddled up under a duvet as icy flowers curled around the edges of their window and the world was blanketed in snow, Xephos pressed fingers against the heat of her thighs and buried his nose in the crook of her neck to breathe in her warmth as if she was the only thing that kept him from freezing. And she had been, in a way.

He met her at a party, as these things go. There was a band playing something he didn’t recognize – he never got the hang of keeping track of the musical trend of the day – and they served cheap drinks that Xephos only graciously accepted because refusing them would only draw attention to himself. He’d been there for a reason, an assignment maybe; between faces blurring together and his suit jacket too stiff, too formal to his liking, his mind had been elsewhere as he did what he came there to do. Watch, learn. Reconnaissance, mostly.

She’d been chatting to someone else, of course, when he saw her. Just across the dance floor, in a red dress that clung to her in all the right ways and with hair up in a bun less neat and tidy than was supposedly fashionable in these circles – but it suited her so well that Xephos suddenly didn’t understand why not everyone in the world wore their hair like that. Then again, she could get away with anything, he thought; and then she laughed politely at something her companion was saying and Xephos nearly choked on his scotch.

From that moment on, he hadn’t stopped chasing her.

Their first dance had been as successful as any first dance ever was, a careful hand resting on the small of the blonde’s back as etiquette told it to, catching her warmth under his palm as she looked up at him with amusement dancing in her eyes.

“One song, is that right?”

He’d just nodded.

That first night, he wished he could have tasted whatever she’d been drinking; to lick it from her lips until she was all he could see and breathe and taste. But she had laughed and said goodbye and didn't turn around once –

and it had only made him want her more.

-

“Then tell me why you keep sneaking out at night!”

“I’m not  _sneaking out,_ for fuck’s sake! You know I work late, Lom-“

“For all I know you’re some kind of drug dealer, Xeph. You don’t tell me anything and I never ask questions, but then you come home and bleed all over our bloody carpet. What do you expect me to say?”

He’d rather die than lie to her, cheat on her like she’d accused him of once, treat her like she was every other person he’d ever meet. But with ice pressed against his forehead to stop the bruises he knew would form anyway and the both of them shouting at each other until Xephos was sure the neighbours heard it too, he almost wished it was that simple.

Lomadia sat down on the bed and buried her face in her hands, and Xephos shuffled to the side a little to make room as he tried to think of where he’d told her he’d be this time. With a soft exhale, part exhaustion and part frustration that she didn’t deserve, Xephos glanced to the side and met her eyes with a small smile.

“Listen, Lom. It’s.. complicated.”

“It always is with you, Xeph.”

-

It should have been so easy. A promise that so many people made at one point or another once they got caught up in the trade they hated so much, out of poverty or desperation or whatever they managed to use as an excuse; one last job, quick and clean. He wasn’t even supposed to kill anyone, that wasn’t what his kind did. Maybe he would have gotten the offer at some point or another, if he’d stayed, but tonight the gun was just a safety measure. It felt heavy in his pocket, like stones weighing him down as he made his way through the mass of people that hesitantly parted for him like a stubborn sea.

And he was sure everyone could tell; by the panic in his eyes and the way he held himself, so out of place that he grated against everything around him until he could almost  _feel_ it. But he’d been stubborn and young and utterly convinced that simple promises were just that.

Quick.

Clean.

Of course it hadn’t been.

-

She’d always been hot to the touch, her warmth seeping through his skin and into his bones as she wrapped strong legs around him and held on as if she would never let him go. And he’d done the same, long arms pulling her close until he couldn’t breathe and slender fingers, cool but nimble and carding through her hair as if they were meant to do that and only that. He counted the days, the weeks, the months in his head and every moment that passed felt like a gift that he didn’t deserve.

But now, she was cold. Or Xephos assumed she was, anyway; with her eyes squeezed shut in forced exhaustion and slumped in a chair that he didn’t recognize, her chest only barely moving and so pale that he could have  _sworn_ she was-

“Shoulda known better than t’get a lovely bird like this one involved, mate.”

The bruises coloured her skin a myriad of blues and purples and Xephos shook with the force it took not to strangle the person, the  _monster_ who’d dared to drag her into this old life of his that he’d said goodbye to ages ago. She didn’t belong in this place that smelled like dried-up blood and cigarette smoke, something beautiful and broken among the hyena’s that laughed at his despair until they grew tired of it. Which, admittedly, didn’t take long.

Xephos would never have begged for his life but he begged for hers and by some miracle, they let her go. He never did figure out what happened to her, not until years later; not until he’d started trusting the shadows more than anything else and parties were even less appealing than they’d been when he first met her. But right that moment, all he knew was that they took her away with her wrists still bound and that he prayed for the first time in years even if he didn’t believe in the Gods any more.

-

_“You heard? They found another stiff one tonight.”_

_“Fourth one this month. Heard he got ties to the mobs or something, man. Coppers are up to their ears in paperwork, I bet.”_

_“Y’think they’ll catch who did it?”_

_“Dunno. A man can hope, ain’t that right?”_

-

Xephos never came back after that. The metal that had once felt like such a burden in hands that were too young to wield it only served to free him now, leaving a trail of bodies that never quite led to him. As soon as the last one of them had slumped to the floor, messy and a struggle but dead as could be, Xephos fled the city and left without paying his queen another visit. She’d been warm to the touch, once. Seeped through his skin and his bones and his eyes, but those were as cold now as his hands always were. When he looked in the mirror, he didn’t remember what he’d looked like when she’d still been his.

It was better this way, surely.

They’d been young and stupid and horribly in love.

But she deserved more than a man whose hands touched cold bodies more than warm ones. 


End file.
